Every now and then I get asked "When should a conversation with someone turn into a paid consulting session? How do I make that shift?" I'll try to give some thoughts on this now, it's a very complex topic.
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Replying to @sehurlburt
This question generally, in my experience, gets asked by people who are undercharging by quite a bit, and worried that they might be losing hundreds of dollars to coffee dates. The right margin is likely not “How do I get paid for more coffee dates?” but “How do I do $10k+ gigs”
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Replying to @patio11 @sehurlburt
When you view it from within a consultancy, informal chats about things don’t resemble deliverables all that much. Deliverables are generally e.g. fixed in an artifact, specified in advance, require prep work, do not take 30 minutes to deliver, etc.
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Replying to @patio11 @sehurlburt
Mechanically the way to transition from coffee dates to consulting gigs is straightforward: “This has been a great conversation. I think we could create a lot of value working together. Can I send you a proposal?”
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Replying to @patio11 @sehurlburt
The proposal will not explicitly bill for a coffee-level conversation because if your rate card includes a line for a coffee then it will be systemically and scandalously too low. Instead, your consultancy assumes you do 8~20 coffees per engagement which happens. Price them in.
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Replying to @patio11 @sehurlburt
(This also subsidizes an arbitrarily high number of coffees with people who are not going to be good fits for your consulting services, who you will simply not attempt to deepen the engagement with.)
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Replying to @patio11 @sehurlburt
You probably get this a lot but… I learn so much from your tweetstorms — Have you thought about bundling your ideas & experiences into a book? I feel like it would be up there with Start Small, Stay Small, which was a 5/5 from me.
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I have a book on Amazon about software marketing which is distilled from essays I've written; you can find it by searching for my name. With regards to writing a new book: policy at my day job is to not announce projects before they ship. ;)
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